We Found the Wildest (and Rarest) Foreign Star Wars Treasures — The Saga Vault

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Tonight on the Saga Vault, we're going off-world, not to a galaxy far, far away, but to foreign markets, unofficial lines, strange translations, and souvenirs from the furthest corners of the globe. These aren't items you're going to find at your local Mall of America, but our dedicated collectors were determined to bring them home anyway. Four collectors, four artifacts, only one open slot. Let's open the vault. Welcome to the Saga Vault, where the world's most passionate collectors bring their most cherished artifacts to our table. Tonight's theme, planet furthest from, foreign objects from foreign lands. The relics you only get when Star Wars leaves home. Let's meet our collectors. Duncan Jenkins, a bioweapons engineer from Kansas City, and curator of his very own Sisonian collection. [00:01:09] Speaker 2: I can neither confirm or deny that part. I hope you know if you're making them. [00:01:13] Speaker 1: Vic Wertz, curator of the Imperial Archives and former editor of the Star Wars Insider. Such a sweetheart. Thank you. Steve Sansui, the godfather of sci-fi collecting, and the Guinness Book of World Records holder of the world's largest Star Wars collection. A true Star Wars legend. Thanks for being here, Steve. Somebody had a B. Yeah, that's right. Somebody had a B. And I'm glad it was you. And finally, Gus Lopez, a Star Wars collector from Seattle who likes to travel. All right, Gus. Show and tell us what you brought. [00:01:46] Speaker 3: Here we go. It's a rock. It's a rock. It's more than a rock. [00:01:56] Speaker 1: What is it? [00:01:57] Speaker 3: Well, it's a model of the City Drist Hotel in Tunisia, which happens to be the filming location for the Lars Homestead, the interiors that were shot in Matmata for the first movie. It's the background when Luke and Amparu and Uncle Owen are sitting at the table. This is what you see in the background when you see them walking in the courtyard. It's like a little mini playset of Star Wars. And actually, they went back there for episode two. [00:02:22] Speaker 1: That's really cool. It almost looks like a model miniature. [00:02:25] Speaker 3: One of the things I like to do is when I visit locations is find artifacts from the places that they filmed in Star Wars. You know, it's a tourist destination because the town of Matmata is famous for the troglodyte homes. A lot of people there live in homes like this. But now they do promote -- there's actually things -- souvenirs there now that say Star Wars. So they've sort of -- Really? Yeah, they've caught on. [00:02:46] Speaker 4: Is it a working hotel? Did you stay there? [00:02:48] Speaker 3: It is a working hotel, yeah. I had to convince my wife Pam to stay at it because it's this cave with a wooden door. [00:02:54] Speaker 1: Is this a molded piece or is each one handmade? [00:02:58] Speaker 3: Yeah. It's like a plaster piece that's then painted later. But what was cool about Tunisia is they actually didn't have to build a lot of set. I mean, when they did location scouting, they were actually looking at the architecture in addition to the landscape. There's actually a place called Tatooine in Tunisia, which the name of the planet came from. Really? Spelled a little differently. Spelled a little differently, but yeah. But close. It's actually close spelling. [00:03:22] Speaker 1: So I'm curious. Do you have any idea how many of these they made? [00:03:27] Speaker 3: Not really. No. I mean, one vendor has a few of them and they're handmade. So small numbers of them. [00:03:34] Speaker 1: This isn't even unofficially Star Wars branded, right? No, not even. This is just -- Yeah. This is an area -- This is what the area looks like. [00:03:41] Speaker 3: This is a souvenir of the area that happens to be the Lars Holmsted. [00:03:43] Speaker 4: No royalties are paid. [00:03:45] Speaker 1: I think our next interesting object is going to be a real Turkish delight. Steve, do you want to -- That sounds good. Nice. Nice. [00:03:58] Speaker 4: I know what it is even from behind. Really? [00:04:02] Speaker 1: Star's War. Oh, wow. Wow. Steve, what is this? [00:04:06] Speaker 5: Vintage action figures are at the heart of a lot of collections of Star Wars memorabilia. I've heard. One of the most notable companies that did Star Wars was SB Products and Turkey, and they thought they could get away with doing bootleg version of Star Wars figures because they called it Star's War. And they left out letters from some of the characters' names. So it was Darth Vader and Che Baca. And this is my favorite. This is the Imperial Gunner. And I love it so much because it shows the gunner at the controls of the Death Star laser cannon. Yes. And it turns out to be a Casio calculator from the period. There are other great figures from Hungary and Poland and Russia, but the Turkish Uze figures are the top of the collection, I think. [00:04:58] Speaker 4: So is this the actual calculator from the card? [00:05:01] Speaker 5: Not the actual calculator in the photo. And so how did you find this Turkish figure still unopened? There were dealers at comic conventions and other toy shows back in the 90s who had bootleg figures. And sometimes they were asking a pittance for them. These things have now gone into the four-figure range, some of them. [00:05:23] Speaker 4: Wow. I think all of them. [00:05:25] Speaker 3: What I love about it is also that the cards have action figures on it. Because Kenner and all its, like, affiliates used photos and... Characters. Right. [00:05:33] Speaker 1: That's a really good point. Yeah. [00:05:34] Speaker 5: So it's different. And they did about 10 figures, 12 figures. And they did some vehicles, some small vehicles, too. [00:05:43] Speaker 3: Do you know if they were ever approached by Lucasfilm to be shut down for this? [00:05:47] Speaker 5: They got a cease and desist order. Oh. Because they were doing this over a period of a couple of years in the late 80s. Interesting. [00:05:53] Speaker 1: Very cool. Very cool. Moving from a piece like this to more of a modern oddity from a convenience store far, far away. Vic, why don't you show us what you brought? Okay. Looks like a droid, Vic. [00:06:07] Speaker 4: It does look like a droid. It was a... I can't believe they made that kind of concept. This was made by a company called Sega Toys and offered at the 7-Eleven convenience store in Japan. It is R2... [00:06:23] Speaker 1: 7-Eleven? [00:06:23] Speaker 4: R2-7-Eleven. It is from 2012. It's packaged during the promotion of Star Wars Episode I 3D. What it is, it's called Homestar. It's a planetarium. It would project actual stars from Earth view onto your ceiling with one minor difference. There's a Death Star overhead, but it's actual Earth stars as seen from Earth. Then a special version just for 7-Eleven in 7-Eleven colors with R2-7-Eleven. Generally, you don't get companies introducing new characters, so having the character R2-7-Eleven is kind of unique. [00:07:06] Speaker 1: Especially since it's the name of the convenience store in the convenience store. [00:07:10] Speaker 2: And how would you get this? Was this a prize or for sale and retail? [00:07:14] Speaker 4: I believe this was a prize. You might know better than I do, actually. It was a prize. Yeah. I knew Duncan would know this, of all people. Yeah, I love the Japanese merchandise. It's always so unique and it's got a different look and a different flavor. [00:07:38] Speaker 5: 7-Eleven is owned by a Japanese company. I did not know that. [00:07:42] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that makes sense why Japan's 7-Elevens would be producing products like this, which you don't see that in our 7-Elevens. Right. Have you ever seen one of these work? Obviously, this is in the package. I never have. [00:07:56] Speaker 4: I've never seen it outside the package. Kind of sad. [00:08:00] Speaker 1: Well, this is a great piece. Jumping from Japan over to Europe, we've got our own in-house Russian wizard here. Duncan, what evil are you going to be bringing us today? [00:08:09] Speaker 2: Let me show you. All right. Sounds good. [00:08:13] Speaker 1: Gru-stalare? [00:08:16] Speaker 2: Gru-stalare. [00:08:18] Speaker 1: Oh, what does that mean? [00:08:19] Speaker 2: That means Star Wars from Italy. [00:08:22] Speaker 1: Oh, okay. [00:08:24] Speaker 2: Many of the countries kept the Star Wars logo and that's something that's very common today is that they keep that Star Wars logo almost exclusive. Yes, exactly. But for Italy, they actually changed the logo, but kind of kept it in a similar Star Wars-y look. [00:08:42] Speaker 1: Right. [00:08:42] Speaker 2: But the funny thing I think about it is that they actually called the Landspeeder a hovercraft scooter, which I thought is kind of a funny name, but it tells what it does. [00:08:52] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I guess it only scoots across the desert. [00:08:57] Speaker 3: So is hovercraft scooter Italian for Landspeeder? It must be. Evidently, yeah. [00:09:01] Speaker 1: That's a really good song according to how you pronounce it. [00:09:04] Speaker 3: That's right. [00:09:05] Speaker 1: Hovercraft scooter. [00:09:07] Speaker 2: That's right. The Harvard stuff is very difficult to find. Really? Yes, particularly the vehicles. So does the toy itself sort of lack some of the features of the U.S. toys? Depending on the countries, they may take exactly like the U.S. version, which has the little pop front and have the little stickers and things like that. And then some of the countries opted to not have an opening hood. But in this case, it actually, I believe, has the opening hood. There are variations on the striping around and the chrome for the Landspeeder in different countries. [00:09:43] Speaker 4: So I noticed they've used the American photography on the front. I was going to ask that. Front and sides. But the top photo looks completely different. [00:09:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, the one on the top is unique to Italy. And it shows three and three quarter inch scale vehicles mixed in with the die cast to give kind of perspective of, you know, ones that are in the distance. [00:10:03] Speaker 4: And while all four of us have international items in our collection, Duncan's kind of our go-to guy for international depth. [00:10:12] Speaker 5: He specializes in that. That's one of the things I really like. And Duncan and I both consider ourselves completists. But these days, that means we'd like everything. We can't have everything. We definitely can't have everything. It's just not possible. It is not. No, no. I mean, there are millions of licensed Star Wars objects out there. That's wild. That's wild. [00:10:33] Speaker 1: Four incredible Star Wars artifacts, but only one can be saved for the future generations in our saga vault. A Turkish bootleg that rewrote Star Wars with Star's War. An Italian localization that named a landspeeder, Hovercraft Scooter. And a tchotchke from a movie set turned sleazy Matmata Hotel. And R2-D2's Japanese cousin, R2-711. He shouldn't exist, but he does. Let's argue. [00:11:03] Speaker 4: Well, it's hard to argue because they're all great. Like if that were the original calculator, there'd be no question. Well, I'm leaning towards the Uze because it's just so fabulous. Yeah. [00:11:17] Speaker 2: The Turkish thing is just so unique with the Earthling calculator used as the Death Star gunner. [00:11:24] Speaker 3: Well, I will say I do love the tie-in to 7-Eleven with the R2-711 when they do unique sort of localized products. Those are always fun. And so that has an interesting appeal. [00:11:35] Speaker 5: I love the Citidriss Hotel piece because I am partial to those kinds of souvenir-oriented things, even though I haven't visited very many of the sites. [00:11:45] Speaker 1: Right. The Hovercraft Scooter is just hilarious. Yeah. That's what it's titled. The Matmata Hotel piece just seems so unique and so surprisingly cool. I don't know. This is a tough one. [00:11:59] Speaker 2: It's not a specific Star Wars piece, you know, as far as like a licensed piece or something like that. [00:12:05] Speaker 3: You know, in doing a museum we want to show the inspiration for how we do things. And this is like actually something from the filming location. So we will want to go beyond like licensed products. [00:12:15] Speaker 4: Right. It may not be immediately recognizable to a casual fan. [00:12:21] Speaker 3: Dan knows from prop collecting there's this thing of the mom test. It's basically, is it an item that your mother would know what it is? And I agree on this case, she should. I don't know if my mother would. She might know what it is. But most mothers would not know what that is. But are any of these pieces that, I mean, so I tell the mom test, the R2 probably is the strongest. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Among the bootleg action figures, the Turkish figures are on the top. [00:12:45] Speaker 5: I love Star Wars items that are quirky. And this to me is among the quirkier items in my collection. Very true. [00:12:52] Speaker 3: Yeah. I love the idea of the Imperial gunner hitting square root instead. [00:13:01] Speaker 5: Destroy Alderaan. [00:13:04] Speaker 3: What about Duncan's piece? Like if you're showing the international range of the action figure toys, it's great for that. [00:13:16] Speaker 1: I have to say from now on, whenever I watch the original Star Wars, I'm not going to be be seeing a Landspear and we're seeing a hovercraft scooter. [00:13:22] Speaker 2: A hovercraft scooter. Yeah. [00:13:23] Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is going to be a tough vote. At least for me. I don't know about you guys. No, it is. [00:13:27] Speaker 2: It is a tough vote. [00:13:28] Speaker 5: I don't know about you guys. [00:13:39] Speaker ?: I don't know about you guys. I don't know about you guys. I don't know about you guys. I don't know about you guys. I don't know about you guys. I don't know about you guys. [00:13:52] Speaker 1: All right. Let's start with Gus. All right. Who'd you vote for? [00:13:57] Speaker 3: R2, 7-Eleven. [00:13:59] Speaker 1: All right. And why? [00:14:01] Speaker 3: Because I just love the tie-ins with like local brands, you know, even though it's a big one, 7-Eleven. That kind of thing is just something that appeals to me. [00:14:09] Speaker 1: Steve. [00:14:10] Speaker 5: I voted for the City Driss Souvenir because that's something that I would love to add to my collection. Vic. [00:14:18] Speaker 4: I voted for the Uzay because it's so, it's just eye-catching and it's just, just a cool piece. [00:14:25] Speaker 1: Duncan. [00:14:25] Speaker 2: I also voted for the Uzay. I think it's just fascinating and hilarious, very fun on a lot of different levels. [00:14:34] Speaker 1: Very cool. But my personal choice is the homestead because it's such a limited piece and the way it's made, it's not connected to Star Wars, but it is. These are the locations that inspired Star Wars to shoot there and create planets that look like the actual world. So that's my reasoning. So I think we have a tie. The tie between Gus's piece and Steve's piece. I don't think anybody here voted for their own piece. No. No. [00:15:02] Speaker ?: No. [00:15:02] Speaker 1: That's interesting. [00:15:04] Speaker 5: We all want to add these pieces to the story. Here we go. Okay. There we go. Which piece do you want most? That's the right attitude. Yes. Yes. [00:15:10] Speaker 1: Absolutely. Well, the only way we're going to figure this out is to go out to the audience. And I think it's really important that the audience votes. This is you guys not just voting on our show for the Saga Vault, but this is information that's going to help the museum find out what the audience really wants. [00:15:28] Speaker 5: And we've got 1.5 million pieces or so to go through. That's a lot. [00:15:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, you need some help organizing it, right? You've got a week to vote and we'll find out who wins. [00:15:44] Speaker ?: Thank you.